Method for automated handling of outbound contacts requiring assured connection to a live agent

ABSTRACT

A system for assuring agent connection for outbound calls placed in an automated outbound calling campaign includes an outbound dialing server, a digital data repository coupled to the outbound dialing server, the data repository storing outbound dialing records for automated outbound dialing, and software executing on the outbound dialing server from a non-transitory physical medium, the software providing a first function for determining for a specific outbound dialing record if the connection to a live agent must be an assured connection, a second function for dialing and engaging an agent via an internal call for reservation of the agent, and a third function for bridging the call connections forged between the system and the agent and the system and the outbound party upon answer of the outbound call.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED DOCUMENTS

N/A

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention is in the field of telephony and pertainsparticularly to methods and apparatus for automated handling of outboundcontacts requiring assured connection to a live agent.

2. Discussion of the State of the Art

In the field of telephony, call centers exist for handling transactionsfor companies marketing to consumers of products and services. Onefunction available in many call centers is proactive outbound calling ofcustomers for the purpose of engaging those customers in the salesprocess, hopefully resulting in new transactions.

Outbound dialing campaigns are run inside a contact center in automaticdialing mode. Automatic dialing modes may include progressive dialingmode and predictive dialing mode. Automatic outbound dialing campaignsdo not guarantee a connection between the live potential customer and alive agent after the call is answered. In predictive dialing, the systemdials more calls than there are available agents to handle the callsbased on the assumption that some of those call attempts will not besuccessfully connected. Therefore, an agent may not appear available forall calls placed.

In progressive dialing mode the system places a call only when itdiscovers an agent available to take the call. However, the designatedagent may become distracted by some other processing tasks and suddenlybecome unavailable to accept the dialed outbound call. In a blendedcampaign including incoming calls and outbound calls, incoming callstake priority and may further distract an agent from handling anoutbound call in progressive dialing mode.

More recently, is has been observed that some outbound calls made bytelephony call centers require an assurance or guarantee that animmediate connection to a live agent is established immediately afterthe call is answered by a live person. This requirement may be rooted inlegislative regulations in specified areas where contact centers conductbusiness or by business-level requirements for handling specific typesof highly valuable customers in outbound campaigns.

A challenge is to implement such ‘assured connections’ of live personsto agents within the outbound contact center in automatically dialedcampaigns without impeding agent productivity. At the time of thiswriting guaranteed assurance of a live connection for an outboundcontact can only be accomplished manually such as in preview dialingmode where an agent that is to handle the call places the call manuallyafter previewing the dialing record. Obvious limitations to thisapproach include manual dial initiation and manual call progressdetection performed by the agent placing the call. It has been shown inempirical testing that manual implementation of outbound contact issignificantly less productive that automated dialing.

To automate dialing of contacts requiring assured connection, contactcenter administration may be required to sort out the dialing recordsrequiring assured connection from standard dialing records and aggregatethose into a separate campaign to run at a separate time with a suitablestaff of agents for achieving assured connection for those callsanswered. Agents working on such specialized campaigns cannot processany other interactions or perform any other tasks causing an impedimentto agent productivity.

Therefore, what is clearly needed is a system and methods for automatedhandling of outbound calls requiring assured connection to a live agentupon answer of the call. A system such as this would enable assuredconnections without impeding call center productivity.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The problem stated above is that automated handling of outbound callsthat require assured connection to a live agent is desirable for a callcenter, but many of the conventional means for connecting outbound callsto agents, such as automated progressive and predictive outbound callingcampaigns, also create underutilization of agent resources. Theinventors therefore considered functional elements of an outboundcalling system, looking for elements that exhibit interoperability thatcould potentially be harnessed to provide custom outbound contact forcalls requiring assured connection to a live agent in an automatedfashion but in a manner that would not create agent underutilization orrequire any manual processing.

Every outbound dialing system is driven by a list of machine-readabledialing records, one by-product of which is an unavoidable number ofcalls that are abandoned due to agent unavailability at the time of thecall attempt. Most such outbound dialing systems employ automateddialing programs, servers, and routing routines to conduct the connectedoutbound calls to available live agents and server-based automatedsoftware routines are typically a part of such apparatus.

The present inventors realized in an innovation session that if, at thepoint of call placement, outbound contacts that require assuredconnection to a live agent upon answer could be routed to a pre-reservedagent using an automated process, significantly better utilization ofthe agent's time might result. The inventor therefore constructed aunique outbound calling system that allowed automation in detection ofoutbound dialing records requiring assured connection and automatedtreatment of those records, assuring live agent handling immediatelyupon answer of those outbound calls. A significantly more efficientagent utilization results, with no impediment to the efficiency ofnormal outbound call processing created.

Accordingly, in one embodiment of the present invention, a system forassuring agent connection for outbound calls placed in an automatedoutbound calling campaign is provided and includes an outbound dialingserver, a digital data repository coupled to the outbound dialingserver, the data repository storing outbound dialing records forautomated outbound dialing, and software executing on the outbounddialing server from a non-transitory physical medium, the softwareproviding a first function for determining for a specific outbounddialing record if the connection to a live agent must be an assuredconnection, a second function for dialing and engaging an agent via aninternal call for reservation of the agent, and a third function forbridging the call connections forged between the system and the agentand the system and the outbound party upon answer of the outbound call.

In one embodiment, the outbound calling campaign is a predictivecampaign or a progressive campaign. In a preferred embodiment, theoutbound dialing records requiring assured connection are digitallyflagged in nomenclature readable by the software. In a variation of thisembodiment, the digital flag is set or not set using binary numbers 1 or0. In one embodiment, the agent for reservation is selected from thepool of agents working the outbound campaign.

In a preferred embodiment, once the agent is internally engaged, theagent is marked not available for other tasks. In one embodiment,answering the outbound call includes answer by a live person or answerby an answering service. In a variation of this embodiment, theanswering service includes an answering machine or answer by adesignated third party.

In one embodiment, if the outbound call attempt fails due to busy signalor no answer, the reserved agent is immediately released back into thepool of agents. In one embodiment, a call progress detection feature ofthe system is automatically switched off for calls requiring assuredconnection. In one embodiment, the internal call to reserve the agentincludes additional data that informs the agent of the assuredconnection requirement relative to the pending outbound call.

According to an aspect of the present invention, in a system forassuring agent connection for outbound calls placed in an automatedoutbound calling campaign, a method for rendering dialing records thatrequire assured connection visible to outbound dialing software isprovided and includes the steps (a) identifying from a pool of dialingrecords loaded on an outbound dialing server, individual ones of thosedialing records that require assured connection to a live agent uponanswer of an outbound call, and (b) digitally flagging the dialingrecords identified in step (a).

In one aspect of the method, the outbound calling campaign is apredictive campaign or a progressive campaign. In one aspect, in step(b), the flag is set or not set using binary numbers 1 or 0. In oneaspect, in step (b) flagging is an automated process based on scriptedrules relative to the structure of the dialing records in the pool.

According to another aspect of the present invention, in a system forassuring agent connection for outbound calls placed in an automatedoutbound calling campaign, a method for reserving an agent for a pendingoutbound call attempt is provided including steps (a) establishing fromthe system, an internal call between the system and an available agent,(b) once the call of step (a) is established, placing the outbound call,and (c) when the outbound call is answered, bridging the calls betweenthe system and the agent, and the system and the outbound destinationparty.

In one aspect of the method, the outbound calling campaign is apredictive campaign or a progressive campaign. In one aspect, in step(a), the internal call to reserve the agent includes additional datathat informs the agent of the assured connection requirement relative tothe pending outbound call. In one aspect, in step (c) if the outboundcall attempt fails due to busy signal or no answer, the reserved agentis immediately released for other duties. In a preferred aspect, in step(c), the call is answered by an answering machine, a designated thirdparty, or by a live person.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIGURES

FIG. 1 is an architectural overview of a communications networksupporting assured connection of an automated outbound call according toan embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a united markup language sequence diagram illustrating asequence of events for establishing assured connection of an automatedoutbound call according to the embodiment of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is a process flow chart illustrating steps for assuringconnection of an automated outbound call according to an embodiment ofthe present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The inventors provide a unique system for guaranteeing an assuredconnection to a live agent for outbound calls placed automatically by anoutbound dialing server. The present invention is described in enablingdetail using the following examples, which may describe more than onerelevant embodiment falling within the scope of the present invention.

FIG. 1 is an architectural overview of a communications network 100supporting assured connection of an automated outbound call according toan embodiment of the present invention. Communications network 100includes a call center 101 having connection to an external telephonenetwork 102, which is the public switched telephone network (PSTN) inthis example. PSTN 102 may also carry telephone communications sourcedfrom wireless carriers and other types of telephone and data networkswithout departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention.

PSTN network 102 includes a local telephone switch 103. Telephone switch103 may receive calls, which are destined for call center 101, sourcedfrom any telephony-capable appliance. Telephone switch 103 may be aprivate branch exchange (PBX), an automated call distributor (ACD), oranother type of telephone switch including a soft telephony switch (datanetworks) without departing from the spirit and scope of the presentinvention. Telephone switch 103 is connected via a telephone trunk 105to a central telephone switch 106 maintained within call center 101.Telephone switch 106 may be a PBX, an ACD, or another type of telephoneswitch including a soft telephony switch (data networks) withoutdeparting from the spirit and scope of the present invention.

Call center 101 is adapted to perform customer service includingtransaction fulfillment for one or more client companies. However thepresent invention is not limited to being practiced from a specificarchitecture symbolized by a call center. In one embodiment, theinvention may be practiced in a virtual call center environment using anoutbound dialing server and an accessible pool of live call centeragents that may be grouped or distributed remotely over a wide areanetwork.

Call center 101 includes a local area network (LAN) 108 adapted for datacommunications and Internet protocol (IP)-based telephony. An Internetnetwork connection to call center 101 is not illustrated in thisexample, as illustration of one external communications network isdeemed sufficient for explanation of the present invention. LAN 108supports a computer telephony integrated (CTI) processor 107 directlyconnected thereto and connected via a CTI link to telephone switch 106.CTI processor 107 is adapted to provide call routing intelligence amongother things to telephony switch 106. CTI processor 107 includes aninstance of interactive voice response (IVR) software adapted to screenincoming calls into the center for the purpose of determining callerintent and self-service options for some callers who do not require liveassistance.

LAN 108 supports a number of agent-operated workstations 109 (1-n).Agent workstations 109 (1-n) each include, at minimum, a LAN-connectedpersonal computer (PC) and a telephone for voice communication. In thisexample telephones deployed at each workstation 109 (1-n) is connectedto telephone switch 106 via internal telephone wiring 110. Otherconfigurations are common including headsets that operate with telephoneapplications on the PCs, IP telephones directly connected to LAN, andother possible configurations. Agent workstations 109 (1-n) may beconsidered a pool of active call center agents in this example. As such,the agents share an agent queue 119. Agent queue 119 is adapted tocontain interactions waiting for service by live agents. Statisticalparameters tied to queue 119 include estimated waiting time, abandonmentrate and like statistics.

LAN 108 supports an outbound dialing server 113. Outbound dialing server113 includes a non-transitory physical storage medium adapted to containall of the data and software required to enable function as an outbounddialing server. Outbound dialing server 113 is connected to a datarepository 114 that is adapted to contain dialing records for anoutbound campaign presumed running in this example. Dialing records 114contain information about customers and at minimum, the primary customercontact number for outbound dialing. Outbound dialing server 113 isadapted with the aid of a SW application 117 to place outbound callsfrom a list of dialing records. Records in repository 114 contain boththose that require an assured connection to a live agent upon answer,and those that do not require an assured connection. In this example,outbound calls are queued along with normal incoming traffic in queue119.

An outbound campaign presumed running in this example might be apredictive style campaign or a progressive style campaign. In predictivedialing mode, server 113 places outbound calls for agents who arepredicted to be available at the time of answer of the call. Inprogressive mode, a call is placed each time an agent is determined tobe available. In each mode, the system places one or more additionalcalls based on the assumption that some call attempts will fail due tobusy or no answer. This is done to optimize agent utilization as much aspossible. Both modes described above are automated and driven byalgorithm.

LAN 108 supports a universal routing server 111. Routing server 111includes a non-transitory physical digital medium adapted to contain allof the data and software required to enable service of routinginstructions upon request. Routing server 111 is adapted to provideintelligent routing routines for routing interactions to agents 109(1-n). LAN 108 supports a statistics server 115. Statistics server 115includes a non-transitory physical medium adapted to contain all of thedata and software required to enable function as a statistics server.Statistics server 115 is connected to a data repository 116 thatcontains call center statistics for service.

Agent queue 119 may have several statistics associated with it such ascurrent estimated waiting time in queue. Agents operating workstations109 (1-n) have statistics associated with them such as currentavailability status, average call handling time, and other types ofstatistics. Outbound dialing server 113 may subscribe to statisticalserver 115 for statistics related to agent availability. Routing server111 may also subscribe to current statistics available from statisticsserver 115.

Customers and potential customers of call center 101 are representedherein as telephone icons (104(1-n) (logically illustrated). In somejurisdictions, outbound calls placed to certain numbers require that ifanswered, the customer is connected to a live agent immediately withoutrequiring a typical wait in queue. These dialing records in repository114 may have a binary flag set as 1 or 0 where 1 indicates that thisrecord requires assured connection to a live agent and 0 indicates thatthis record has no requirement for assured connection to a live agent.

In practice of the invention, outbound dialing server 113 first selectsa next record in a list of records organized in repository 114 (1). Theoutbound dialing server reads the record looking for a set flagindicating that an assured connection is required. If an assuredconnection is required, an outbound call placement is delayed until itis determined if there is an available agent, which may be determined atrouting server 111 (2). Once it is determined that an agent isphysically available to handle the call, the outbound dialing serverplaces an internal call to the target agent, in this case 109 (n) (3).This action effectively “reserves” the agent for handling the call. Theagent cannot receive any other calls or perform any other tasks while“engaged” by the system.

Desktop software 118 installed at the agent's PC in the workstationnotifies the agent via message, pop-up, beep, or tone that the agent isbeing reserved specifically for the pending outbound call. Agentworkstation 109(n) receives all of the information about the customersubject to the outbound call placement before or at the time of callplacement with the aid of a desktop notification SW 118.

The system then places an outbound call to the number on the dialingrecord and waits for an answer (4). In this case customer 104 (n)answers the call from the outbound dialing server. Outbound dialingserver 113, with the aid of SW 117 and CTI processor 107, bridges theseparate calls (internal to agent) and (outbound to customer) once thecustomer has answered the outbound call establishing a session betweenthe agent and the customer. Other agents working agent queue 119 proceednormally as outbound dialing server 113 places outbound calls. Thereserved agent 109 (n) in this example is immediately released if callprogress detection does not detect a live answer, answering service, oran answering machine. In one embodiment, call progress detection may bedisabled for outbound calls that require assured connection.

FIG. 2 is a united modeling language (UML) sequence diagram 200illustrating a sequence of events for establishing assured connection ofan automated outbound call according to the embodiment of FIG. 1.Diagram 200 includes a dialing engine analogous to SW 112 residing onoutbound dialing server 113 of FIG. 1. At (a), the dialing enginedetects a dialing record that requires an assured connection to a liveagent upon answer of an outbound call. At (b), the dialing engine checkswith a routing service analogous to SW 112 residing on routing server111 of FIG. 1. if there is an available agent to handle the call. Therouting service returns the number for the available agent. Real timeagent availability statistics may be used to determine agentavailability.

At (c), the dialing engine places an internal call to the agent toreserve the agent for the pending outbound call. Desktop notification SWanalogous to SW 118 of FIG. 1 may inform the agent of the reservationstatus. At (d), the outbound dialing engine places the outbound call tothe outbound party according to dialing parameters of the dialingrecord. Once the call is answered, at (e), the dialing engine bridgesthe separate calls to establish the session between the agent and theoutbound party. The customer information pertinent to the dialing recordand purpose of the session is forwarded to the agent with the aid ofdesktop notification software as described previously. This step may beperformed at the time of call placement or call bridging such that theinformation is available to the agent before the session begins. At (f),the session is established.

In one embodiment, dialing records requiring assured connection aredispersed throughout the dialing record in a manner that prevents themfrom being stacked together requiring an unreasonable number of agentsto be reserved. The dialing engine may recognize records as requiring anassured connection via flagging the state using a binary flaggingsystem. Other forms of tagging may also be used. In one embodimentreserving an agent by internal call may result through a prediction ofagent availability, the internal call placed according to a predictionof the next available agent. The outbound call is not placed until thereserved agent is physically engaged in a call assuring reservation.

FIG. 3 is a process flow chart 300 illustrating steps for assuringconnection of an automated outbound call according to an embodiment ofthe present invention. At step 301 an outbound dialing server analogousto server 113 of FIG. 1 processes a next dialing record from a list ofrecords assembled for an outbound calling campaign. At step 302, theserver determines if the flag is set for assured connection to a liveagent. If at step 302, the engine determines that the flag is not set,the process moves to step 303 where standard outbound calling treatmentis performed for the record. This may include queuing the call, ifanswered for the next available live agent.

At step 302, if it is determined that the flag is set, the dialingengine requests routing to an available agent at step 304. At step 305,the routing service determines if an agent is available. If an availableagent is not found (all agents busy), the dialing engine may repeat therequest until the service returns an available agent ID. If the servicefinds an available agent at step 305, the dialing engine calls the agentat step 306 and engages the agent in reserved session pending theoutcome of the outbound call placement.

At step 307, the dialing engine places the outbound call according tothe parameters of the dialing record. At step 308, the dialing enginedetermines whether the outbound call is answered. If at step 308, theplaced call to the outbound party is not answered, the agent onreservation is released for the next normal call at step 309. After callfailure and release of agent, logic may be provided for post treatmentof the dialing record such as repeating the call attempt at a later timeduring the campaign window. The process resolves back to step 301 wherethe dialing engine selects a next record for processing. It is importantto note that other dialing records not requiring assured connectionsmight be pulled and processed normally while the dialing recordrequiring assured connection is processed according to the presentinvention. In this way, delaying placement of the outbound call until anagent reservation is conserved may not impede on the other calls beingserviced.

If the dialing engine detects that the call is answered at step 308, thedialing engine immediately bridges the two separate calls to establishthe session between the client and the agent. In this case, the outboundparty did not require any time in queue. After the session isestablished at step 310, the process resolves back to step 301 whereprocessing of dialing records is ongoing. In one embodiment, dialingrecords may be tagged or flagged by an automated software-driven processusing a rules base that instructs the software which particular recordsto flag for assured connection. Such rules may be updated asdesignations for assured connection are changed or added for specificcalling areas or regions.

As mentioned above, dialing records may be tagged or flagged to indicatethat an assured connection is required. In accordance with the presentinvention, however, this indication is not necessarily static, but insome cases may be changed just before or during execution of theoutbound campaign. This may be advantageous, for example, where acertain quota of assured-connection calls has or has not been met. Insome embodiments the condition of a dialing record or group of recordsas flagged or not flagged may be altered. This may be done manually byan operator while the campaign is in progress, for example, or initiatedby software in response to a threshold or trigger set manually or byrule. There are, as well, a variety of ways that such tags may beapplied, and in some cases the tag itself may be of sufficientcomplexity to initiate any one of or combination of a variety of actionsto operate on a particular dialing record.

In another embodiment of the invention, in an outbound campaign,functionality is provided to track instances wherein a live partyanswers a call, but no successful connection is made to a live agent. Insome circumstances in is highly desirable under such circumstances tore-dial the party that answered the call, and to make certain, in thecircumstance that the called is again answered by a live person, thatthe person be immediately connected to a live agent. This isaccomplished in this embodiment by inserting the number back into thedialing list with the flag set for an assured connection, so when thenumber is redialed, in the event the call is answered, there will be anagent waiting to communicate with the person called.

It will be apparent to one with skill in the art that the outbounddialing system of the invention may be provided using some or all of thementioned features and components without departing from the spirit andscope of the present invention. It will also be apparent to the skilledartisan that the embodiments described above are specific examples of asingle broader invention that may have greater scope than any of thesingular descriptions taught. There may be many alterations made in thedescriptions without departing from the spirit and scope of the presentinvention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for assuring agent connection foroutbound calls placed in an automated outbound calling campaigncomprising: an outbound dialing server; a digital data repositorycoupled to the outbound dialing server, the data repository storingoutbound dialing records for automated outbound dialing; and softwareexecuting on the outbound dialing server from a non-transitory physicalmedium, the software providing: a first function determining for aspecific outbound dialing record if the connection to a live agent mustbe an assured connection; a second function dialing and engaging anagent via an internal call for reservation of the agent; and a thirdfunction bridging the call connections forged between the system and theagent and the system and the outbound party upon answer of the outboundcall.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein the outbound calling campaign isa predictive campaign or a progressive campaign.
 3. The system of claim1, wherein the outbound dialing records requiring assured connection aredigitally flagged in nomenclature readable by the software.
 4. Thesystem of claim 3, wherein the digital flag is set or not set usingbinary numbers 1 or
 0. 5. The system of claim 1, wherein the agent forreservation is selected from the pool of agents working the outboundcampaign.
 6. The system of claim 5, wherein once the agent is internallyengaged, the agent is marked not available for other tasks.
 7. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein answering the outbound call includes answerby a live person or answer by an answering service.
 8. The system ofclaim 7, wherein the answering service includes an answering machine oranswer by a designated third party.
 9. The system of claim 1, wherein ifthe outbound call attempt fails due to busy signal or no answer, thereserved agent is immediately released back into the pool of agents. 10.The system of claim 1, wherein a call progress detection feature of thesystem is automatically switched off for calls requiring assuredconnection.
 11. The system of claim 1, wherein the internal call toreserve the agent includes additional data that informs the agent of theassured connection requirement relative to the pending outbound call.12. In a system for assuring agent connection for outbound calls placedin an automated outbound calling campaign, a method for renderingdialing records that require assured connection visible to outbounddialing software comprising the steps; (a) identifying from a pool ofdialing records loaded on an outbound dialing server, individual ones ofthose dialing records that require assured connection to a live agentupon answer of an outbound call; and (b) digitally flagging the dialingrecords identified in step (a).
 13. The method of claim 12, wherein theoutbound calling campaign is a predictive campaign or a progressivecampaign.
 14. The method of claim 12, wherein in step (b), the flag isset or not set using binary numbers 1 or
 0. 15. The method of claim 12,wherein in step (b) flagging is an automated process based on scriptedrules relative to the structure of the dialing records in the pool. 16.In a system for assuring agent connection for outbound calls placed inan automated outbound calling campaign, a method for reserving an agentfor a pending outbound call attempt, comprising the steps: (a)establishing an internal call between the system and an available agent;(b) once the call of step (a) is established, placing the outbound call;and (c) when the outbound call is answered, bridging the internal calland the outbound call.
 17. The method of claim 16, wherein the outboundcalling campaign is a predictive campaign or a progressive campaign. 18.The method of claim 16, wherein in step (a), the internal call toreserve the agent includes additional data that informs the agent of theassured connection requirement relative to the pending outbound call.19. The method of claim 16, wherein in step (c) if the outbound callattempt fails due to busy signal or no answer, the reserved agent isimmediately released fore other duties.
 20. The method of claim 16,wherein in step (c), the call is answered by an answering machine, adesignated third party, or by a live person.